Cannonite Bohemians After World War II by Alan Wald

Artist and cartoonist Laura Slobe at Mountain Spring Camp, 1950s, with other SWP members, from left: Tom Kerry, Carl Skoglund and Richard Garza. A Minority within a Minority Cannonite Bohemians after World War II By Alan Wald This essay is dedicated to the memory of George Lavan Weissman Perlstein, 1915-2009), a Pulitzer Prize-winning music theorist (1916-85), exemplary Marxist intellectual. “Friendship is born at and composer once married to the sculptress and painter that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I Laura Slobe (1909-58). Nothing written even hinted that these thought I was the only one.’” — C.S. Lewis two iconoclasts were in the past highly educated and com- THOMAS CARLYLE FAMOUSLY observed: “History is the mitted Marxists, or that revolutionary ideas oxygenated their essence of innumerable biographies.”1 If so, how does one cultural thinking at crucial moments. write a historical account of artistic rebels and sexual non- Alarm over memory loss of this type is the motive for conformists in the U.S. Trotskyist movement during the this present essay, which appraises the lives of Bloch, Perle repressive years of the early Cold War? An odd collusion and Slobe, along with others who sought a vexed amalgam of circumstances, including the hardening of anticommunist of unconstrained cultural creativity, personal freedom, and stereotypes and the self-censorship of radicals, caused a disciplined politics in the postwar Socialist Workers Party widespread memory loss that was acute on certain subjects. (SWP). What can be recovered of the political and personal Chronologies of world events and the recitation of “correct” passions of many “outlaw” lives on the Left, especially from political positions are no remedies; the emotional archeology those who infused anti-capitalism with anti-Stalinism, are only is what I am after. fragmentary narratives to be steered warily into coherency. Institutionalized forgetting about the scope of the Trotskyist For the postwar decade, one must write a kind of ghostly experience was on display in every venue following the deaths history, the reconstruction of the presence of an absence in a of Peter Rafael Bloch (1921-2008), an authority on Puerto time of persecution. Rican artistic culture, and George Perle (born George “Outlaw” Lives on the Left Alan Wald, an editor of Against the Current, is most recently author The late 1940s and 1950s was an era of growing right-wing of American Night: The Literary Left in the Era of the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Many thanks to “moral panic” about “folk devils” of communism and homo- those who offered critical suggestions in response to earlier drafts of this sexuality.2 The national mood, soon dubbed “McCarthyism,” essay: Howard Brick, Angela Dillard, Peter Drucker, Ursula McTaggart, reinforced the predisposition of socialist organizations to Christopher Phelps, and Bryan Palmer. promote a public, supposedly “proletarian” image of their AGAINST THE CURRENTAGAINST THE CURRENT 25 members as conventional in appearance and behavior. time presence in the Trotskyist movement of sexual non-con- An example of the SWP’s earlier concern about the formists. Homophobia was everywhere, including the Left, and danger of alienating potential workers can be found in slow to slacken. The insinuation of a person’s homosexuality, the 1940 book The History of American Trotskyism, which accurate or not, was widely perceived as a slur upon the became required reading for members and sympathizers. In a accused. noted passage, party leader James At the same time, the historic ethos of the Left was P. Cannon (1890-1974) describes habitually performed as masculinist and hardboiled. how he opposed admission to Leaders set the tone by revealing little of their emo- the SWP of a long-haired man tions; dwelling on the private and intimate was discour- who walked around Greenwich aged as “not political.”4 While the actual love relation- Village with unusual clothes and a ships of Trotskyist militants traversed a continuum curious mustache: “I said, people from Puritans (who equated sex with heterosexual of this type are not going to be marriage) to reincarnations of the Bloomsbury Group suitable for approaching the ordi- (who shared multiple partners and sexual orientations), nary American worker. They are the ensuing silence about sexual nonconformity in the going to mark our organization Cold War Left became the dog that didn’t bark for as something freakish, abnormal, illuminating the movement’s affective life. exotic: something that has nothing to do with the normal life of the Institutionalized Forgetting American worker.”3 Using the pseudonyms “Trent Hutter” and “George SWP members, like participants Sanders,” Peter Bloch and George Perle were closely in most organized socialist groups, associated with the postwar SWP for at least 10 years became known for a conserva- each. The organization was called “Cannonite” after its leader (James tive appearance and a “clean-cut” Using pseudonyms, look, reflected in the photographs Peter Bloch (above) P. Cannon), mainly of activists as well as cartoon and George Perle from 1940 through drawings of the “working man” (right) were part the 1960s. Although of the bohemians there are parties, that appeared in its press. Yet as who contributed to this essay will show, conventional post-World War II groups, and individ- behavior in one’s personal life, or marxism. uals throughout the in artistic and cultural affinities, was world who to vary- an entirely different matter. ing degrees identify For many individuals, surface conformity began as with the Cannon politically strategic, an artificial demeanor to allow a legacy, not a word hearing from those who might be already suspicious was published in of revolutionary ideas as “outside” of and “foreign” to the left-wing press their culture. Then the Cold War atmosphere added about Bloch and intensified forms of state repression to the picture. Anyone Perle’s passing. who might be suspected of violating taboos had even better Nowadays it seems that the history of Trotskyism is far too reasons to blend into the environs or go underground. serious a matter to be left in the hands of “Trotskyists.” This neglect provided a strange contrast to the spectacu- Marxist cultural workers could have several lives; some- larly edited information appearing in the New York Times obitu- times they used different names for their political and profes- aries and other tributes, fulsome in praise but misleading by sional activity. For many militants, such secrecy turned out to gaps and omissions.5 No doubt Bloch and Perle were reticent be habit-forming; much was never recorded at the time, and or even cagey about their pasts, but it was the constraints of then it was forgotten. The exterior deportment became the historical amnesia that induced their admirers to fail to ask history, and with the passage of time the vision of the postwar basic questions about political and emotional allegiances that SWP became locked within a powerful stereotype — one not may have informed the two men’s cultural work. very attractive to young radicals today. Try to understand Beethoven, especially the Eroica sym- Decades after World War II, even when the temper of the phony, without reference to Napoleon and the French Rev- country proved more hospitable to left-wing activism, familiar olution. Or Gertrude Stein, especially “Melanctha,” while expectations triumphed over the remembrance of anomalies ignorant of her relationships with May Bookstaver and Alice B. that might produce a rethinking. There was an understandable Toklas. About Bloch and Perle we were given less than half of reluctance among surviving radical veterans to “name names” the story: The striking correlations between historical events and provide particulars of former members of any Marxist and stages in their intellectual and artistic developments parties who had not gone public. After all, the Attorney passed unremarked. General’s List of Subversive Organizations lasted until 1974; One is asked to believe that a 40-year old German-born someone might yet end up in political “trouble.” Those who man named Peter Bloch materialized suddenly in the 1960s departed in the 1950s were sometimes dismissed as quitters as an authority on Puerto Rican music and art. Scholars and who succumbed to alien class pressures. journalists ascribe Bloch’s choice of topic, activities, and per- There was also a disinclination to acknowledge the long- spective to nostalgia for his European Sephardic heritage. No 26 JULY / AUGUST 2012 one noticed that Bloch himself relied on boilerplate radical originator of the L.A. Free Press and associate of Timothy Leary; language in his first book: “For the last 15 years I have been Marvin Garson (dates unknown), founder of the San Francisco actively involved in the struggle for the cause of Puerto Rican- Express (where he famously called for “Queer Power!” in Hispanic culture.”6 1969); Barbara Garson (b. 1941), author of “MacBird” (1966); Similarly, the acclaimed atonal composer and theorist Henry Spira (1927-98), pivotal figure in the animal rights move- George Perle is depicted as working out his ideas in isola- ment; and Dave Van Ronk (1936-2002), Greenwich Village folk tion from world events. At his desk or in front of a keyboard, and blues singer. Perle studied Vienna School composers Arnold Schoenberg The rumor that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry (1874-1951) and Alban Berg (1885-1945), autotelically under- (1921-91) was once a follower in the SWP of the Argentine going a succession of eye-opening revelations about 12-tone Trotskyist/UFO enthusiast Juan Posadas (Homero Rómulo harmonic modes starting in the late 1930s. There seems to be Cristalli Frasnell, 1912-81) has never been confirmed.14 But a gag order against anyone’s speculating as to what may have obscured affinities between the Far Left and the far edges motivated Perle’s sequence of breakthroughs in theorizing of creative non-conformity are more present than extant post-tonal pitch relationships.

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